


I Sleep Better If You're Around

by drowninglinguists



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, s a d, this period is fascinating you can't lie to me and say that it isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 03:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17479940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowninglinguists/pseuds/drowninglinguists
Summary: She can't act like she can still ask him for things. Even if it hurts him, too, he'll have to say no until she stops asking.





	I Sleep Better If You're Around

**Author's Note:**

> This is from a prompt list and was gifted to me by my friend, @therewithasmile. She's trying to get me going again with writing and I appreciate it endlessly! She also wrote a lovely companion piece to this fic called "i once held your skin". it's a flipped perspective, m'gann's thoughts from the same scene. it's so good!
> 
> Poor Conner is just trying to navigate his life as a single man... Not knowing what to do sometimes can make you an asshole. Takes places soon after their break up, in between season one and season two.

“I sleep better if you’re around.”

 

There’s a heartbeat which spans both the decibel and blinding flash of a solarflare in which he contemplates the snark-filled retort that immediately comes to mind, gives a good, honest effort to coming up with something else, and ultimately decides to say it anyway. (He cannot often hear his own heartbeats.)

 

“Shouldn’t you sleep better if  _ La'gaan _ is around?” He has no trouble hearing the bitterness in his own voice.

 

M’gann’s eyes narrow, and no feat of Kryptonian strength or will-power (not even full-blooded Kryptonian) could stop the shot of guilt through his chest. He hates when he makes her look sad, even after…

 

_ Get it together. You’re not her boyfriend, anymore. _

 

Telling himself to toughen up doesn’t usually help much.

 

“Of course-- I  _ do! _ ” She’s haughty, but her honest reply still shocks him.

 

It isn’t something he wants to think about. He shuts his eyes to try and _not_ think about, but the image only comes easier. He experienced it too many times for it not to be easy to see M’gann’s perfect skin in his head, bathed in moonlight. He can see (remember) the sight of her chest rising and falling from a deep, soothing sleep, pressed into his side or with her head on his chest. He can remember how messy her hair would be in the mornings, and the very first time she’d fallen asleep in his room and wouldn’t let him kiss her because she was worried about “morning breath”, and he can remember that her eyelids are a slightly paler shade of green than the rest of her skin, and he can remember how the sting of betrayal when only a _month_ after he’d ended things with her he heard her giggling with La’gaan’s arm around her shoulders.

 

It was something he had  _ heard _ first. Probably the fault of his super-hearing, probably because she had tried to hide it from him, probably because he had simply been late to find out--

 

Every time he talks to her he must remember that feeling. He knows with certainty that if he ever doesn’t force himself to relive the memory he will ask her to give him another chance. ( _ I was wrong, I would never hurt you again, what does  _ he _ possibly have that I don’t-- _ )

 

“But?” He tries to be cool with his answer (aloof, that was the word Dick had used).

 

“But…” She can’t meet his eye. This makes him both angry and sad. “La’gaan isn’t here, and… All I’m saying is, we don’t have to sleep on opposite sides of the hideout.”

 

Your home getting blown up didn’t matter so much when you and your  _ girlfriend _ only had one place to live, but when you break up with her and she starts dating some guy you can’t stand and comes back way earlier than you thought she would and interrupts you packing up your things because you realized you just can’t stay here for  _ one more minute _ , it’s a lot more complicated.

She finally meets his gaze, and before he can stop himself he catalogues every emotion in her eyes. It’s easy to read that she wants him to stay.

 

A silence takes hold of his throat again, and even his attempt at a hard swallow doesn’t break the choke hold.

 

It feels like  _ she _ broke up with  _ him _ . It’s the  _ one _ thing he was going to get from this, the fact that it was his idea, that he had the moral high ground. 

 

He had thought she was just going to take a few weeks, maybe a month,  _ maybe _ two and reorient herself, do some deep thinking, meditating, whatever would help her, then she would come back and be  _ herself _ again and they could resume like they had never taken a break--

 

“No.” His voice is final, and M’gann flinches. He almost does, too, knowing that he did it to her (again).

 

He forces himself to continue. “No, we can’t, M’gann. I don’t know how we can do  _ anything _ together anymore.” Maybe they’re words he doesn’t mean, but the look of hurt on her face is (for one second) satisfying.

 

Her elbow bends and her hand grasps the top of her forearm, just underneath her elbow. He doesn’t need super-vision to see her knuckles turning white.

 

_ Good _ , he forces himself to think.  _ She’s going to cause me a lot of pain before this is through; if I can take just a few seconds of this right now while she’s letting herself be vulnerable, good for me. _

 

They aren’t his words and they aren’t the way he feels, but even  _ she _ would be hard-pressed to find it in his face.

 

“Okay.” Her voice is hollow.

 

Her eyes are beautiful, even filled with tears, but Conner makes himself look away. He hides his clenched fist behind his hastily-packed bag and marches to the door. Over his shoulder, he calls, “I’ll be back for the rest of my things later.”

 

To avoid breaking the doorframe, he pulls it shut behind him  _ as lightly as possible _ , and it still rattles.

 

He overhears Zatana the next day asking M’gann why she looks so tired. She produces a fake laugh and mumbles something unconvincing about staying up late with a good book.

 

He’s so mad at Zatana for not calling her out on her lie that he doesn’t speak to her for a week. He ends up apologizing later, and Zatana, like the good friend she is, chalks it up to his recent break-up.

 

M’gann doesn’t sleep well for a while, as far as he can tell. There are bags under her eyes and she just isn’t cheerful anymore. It takes another month for her to start smiling at everyone again, and it hurts him more than he thought it would to learn that she’s been staying at La’gaan’s place, sleeping on his chest, letting  _ him _ notice how translucent her eyelids are, kiss her good morning.

 

No one bothers him about being too forceful on the mission that day. Maybe, he thinks, his friends are on  _ his  _ side. 

 

He wishes there  _ were _ no sides, that her side  _ was _ his side, even that La’gaan would break up with her so she could  _ understand _ what kind of pain he was dealing with every day. The thought is full of bitterness, and Conner sighs to himself. He may have ended up things verbally, but  _ she _ broke up with  _ him _ .


End file.
